Ortlund argues that the Protestant
Church did not begin with Luther, much less in the past twenty years. To understand the Church and what we believe
and why we believe it, we must look to the Patristic and Medieval Theologians –
not reading them through the Reformers or anyone else, but in their original
documents – we ought to read what they wrote and learn from it (30).
We do this understanding that the
Church has never been wholly corrupt.
That is – whatever tradition we are in – we ought not throw out all
other traditions because we disagree or understanding something to be wrong in
their theology. There is value in all
the Christian Church – and we neglect mining it to our detriment (37).
Peter J. Leithart writes, “A
Reformational Catholic knows some of his ancestors were deeply flawed but won’t
delete them from the family tree” (59).
Ortlund explains some of the
benefits and perils of retrieval:
The benefits include bulking up
contemporary theology where it is weak, teaching us how to make formal distinctions,
and learning to reframe “modern debates by providing a premodern perspective
(69-72).
Some perils include distorting others’
views – not doing our homework, artificially pressing others’ views to support
our own, “repristination” – presenting ancient views as the last word on an
issue, and “minimalism” – reducing the variety of theological opinions into a
single thought as though there was never any disagreement or nuance (73-75).
In the second half of the book,
Ortlund invites the reader to consider some examples.
In chapter four, he introduces the
Creator/Creation distinction as expounded in Boethius, Calvin, and Torrance.
In chapter five, he looks at “divine
simplicity in Patristic and Medieval perspective.”
In chapter six, he looks at the
doctrine of the Atonement in Irenaeus, Anselm, and Athanasius.
In chapter seven, he looks at “Gregory
the Great on pastoral balance.”
The book includes a general index
and a Scripture index.
I agree with Ortlund: the thought of the Church is the thought of
the Church, and we are diminished by neglecting the thought of those who have
gone before us – all of them.
It saddens me to know that most of
the ministers I know never read a book that was written more than twenty to
thirty years ago. C. S. Lewis called
this “chronological snobbery.”
Ortlund’s book also excited me to go
back to the ancient authors – people I have looked at before, but not recently –
to pick them up, read where I have not read, and grow in my understanding of
the faith and the Church. I wrote down several
works from his footnotes that I am going to read.
This is an excellent call to the
Evangelical Church – and the Church at large – to engage in theological retrieval.
[This review appears on my blog, Amazon.com, and
Goodreads.com.]
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